Giant Gippsland Earthworm

Introduction

In the 1870s, surveyors around Warragul found an animal that they thought may have been a snake. They sent it to the then Director of the National Museum of Victoria, Professor Frederick McCoy, who described it as a new species of earthworm and named it Megascolides australis. Its common name is the Giant Gippsland Earthworm.

Although the body lengths of adult specimens average around under one metre, the body can expand and contract, and lengths of over two metres have been recorded. However, body length is not an accurate measure of size, and fresh body weight is more reliable; adults average around 200 g.

Where does it live?

Even though it is a large species, it is not often seen because it lives deep in the soil and never comes to the surface unless flushed out by heavy rain. It is also very restricted in its distribution. It is only found in the Bass River Valley of South Gippsland, in an area of about 100,000 hectares bounded by the towns of Loch, Korumburra and Warragul. However, within that area, it is very patchy in its distribution and is found in a particular type of blue-grey clay within a short distance of water courses, soaks and springs.

The worm burrows can occur from just below the soil surface to a depth of 1-1.5 m with the worms occurring at a median depth of about half a metre. The Giant Gippsland Earthworm, like any other species of native Australian earthworms, leaves its casts underground in its burrows, and the conical shaped entrances to land crayfish burrows are often mistakenly identified as earthworm casts.

Why is it on the Endangered Species List?

Before European settlement, South Gippsland was predominantly covered by tall, wet eucalypt forest. This vegetation type was extensively cleared for farming leaving small, isolated patches of vegetation. Despite some revegetation undertaken throughout Gippsland; the worms current distribution range remains primarily cleared farmland. The species has survived this massive change because it can go deep into the soil. However, it is considered a threatened species because its range has declined since European settlement. The Giant Gippsland Earthworm is listed as a threatened and protected species under the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, and is also listed as vulnerable under the Commonwealth Endangered Species Act.

Other factors that make the Giant Gippsland Earthworm prone to threat are its slow developmental rate and low reproductive rate. The worms produce a large egg capsule, about 4-7 cm in length, containing a single young which can take over a year to incubate. Baby worms are already 20 cm long when they hatch, but may take several years to reach adulthood. Giant Gippsland Earthworms live in a complex system of burrows and there are still many aspects of its biology and ecology that we know little about.

Comments (95)

Hi Maureen, There are a number of species of large earthworm in Australia. We have had reports of large earthworms in the Dandenongs, but as far as we know this is not the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, Megascolides australis.

Hi, there is a lot we don't know about the Giant Gippsland Earthworn. This is because the species very rarely ventures above ground and studying any subterranean species is difficult. The action statement for this species can be found on the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act and provides a small amount of information concerning reproduction.

As a young man I come across some "extra large' worms when digging for worms for trout fishing near Lake Glenmaggie. they were about 1 metre long (or the couple that I found were). Could these have been another species?. I never disclosed the location to anyone and I hope they are still there.
Cheers,
Paul

Hi Paul - Museum Victoria offers a free specimen identification service however our curators do need to be able to view specimens before offering an identification! You can read about our identification guidelines and submit an enquiry via our Ask the Experts webpage.

Hello. We have had a lot of rain recently (Robertson, NSW) and yesterday I found two huge worms in one of our paddocks. I have taken images. One was dead, and only 25-30cm in length, but the other was still alive and around 45-55cm. Is it known what sort of worms these might have been? I can send images. Best wishes, Georgia Roberts

Do you know the home range of the GGE? Do they stay in a couple of metre square area or do they move a few metres in their daily movement patterns. Im aware that they dont disperse and are pretty sedentary, but wondered if anyone knew their home range - is it the burrow size, which they stay in most of the time, and what is the average size of a burrow for one worm? Thanks! :)

I arrived on this site from Wikipedia and was fascinated to read about these amazing creatures. Certainly they are not disgusting. On the contrary they can be considered one of Australia's unique and symbolic animal species along with the koala, kangaroo, wallaby etc. I hope the efforts to get them off the endangered list and onto a more secure footing (if that expression is appropriate for worms!) will be successful.

Hi Steve, we don't know that anyone has studied when Megascolides australis evolved. Most of the work on this threatened species has looked at distribution and lifecycle. One of our staff in the Palaeontology Department has said that he believes the family Megascolecidae, (one group of earthworms, to which the Giant Gippsland Earthworm belongs) is quite old, as it has a “Gondwanan” distribution, indicating the family possibly evolved at the latest some time in the Mesozoic (possibly older than 200 million years) when the continents were still connected. The Giant Gippsland Earthworm itself may be a much younger species than this but we just don't know. It is likely to be highly adapted to its habitat, so knowing how long the habitat has existed may give an idea of the species’ age. Due to the lack of skeleton and the environment they live in, they almost never fossilise. I doubt that any work on genetics has been done to get an estimate of its origin.

Hi Victoria, it is unlikely that species that are closely related to the Giant Gippsland Earthworm are living in North America. The Giant Gippsland Earthworm, Megascolides australis belongs to the family Megascolecidae, a mainly Southern Hemisphere group, which occurs in Australia, South and Central America, Africa and south-east Asia. There may well be unrelated large species of worm in North America.

Hi Adrian and Marie, as noted in the information sheet the body lengths of adult specimens average around under one metre, but the body can expand and contract, and lengths of over two metres have been recorded.

Giant Gippsland Earthworms are only found in Australia, as mentioned in the main text. They are not dangerous; in fact they are in danger of becoming extinct due to the activities of humans. Except for their extreme size, GGEs are similar to any other earthworm. They are estimated to live for twenty years, but this has not been confirmed. As for how long they have been on earth, this has been answered above (see 24 Sept 2010).

Hi Feralis - Thanks for your enquiry about the reproductive habits of these creatures. As said earlier, the Giant Gippsland Earthworm is actually an hermaphrodite that requires two individuals to reproduce. You might find this information sheet from the DSE interesting.

Hi Alix! Our Collection Manager from this area has given us this information for you: The Giant Gippsland Earthworm (Megascoloides australis) and the common earthworm both belong to the phylum Annelida & the class Oligochaeta. Being members of the same class means that they have many characteristics in common. The attached link covers some of the characteristics oligochaetes have in common. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligochaeta (this is an external link, the contents of which we have no responsibility over).

However, since the Giant Gippsland earthworm & the common garden worm (of which there are many species) belong to different families, there will also be some physiological differences between them. So essentially, the Giant Gippsland Earthworm is a scaled up segmented worm but with their own unique set of characters which separates them for common earthworms.

hi i found this worm not to long ago, and it was quiet big.. found it in a rotting tree in the banks of the diamond creek creek, just after the creek had been flooded, as i am a keen fishermen i put a photo of it up onto a fishing website and a person has told me it is a gippsland one, he said i should report this to you guys. i have a photo but not to sure if i could send it through this?

Hi,
I saw a kookaburra pulling a large worm from a burrow in wet sclerophyll forest in the ranges of south gippy. The worm was about 600mm long and as thick as a mans index finger. Two kookas had a tug a war once it was extracted then shared the spoils. Any ideas what species?

Hi Chris, the Museum used to have an expert on Giant Gippsland Earthworms but unfortunately she is no longer here and we don't currently have a staff member with expertise in worms. To determine species an expert would most likely need either good quality images or a specimen.

Early last year a poster from Robertson(cf below) was to send in some pictures of a large worm for identification. I am a Vet whose practice is near Robertson and we have problems with dogs digging holes to pull up these large worms. Many times the owners think the dogs are digging from boredom or stress but often they are hearing these noisy worms under the ground and digging them up- I would love to know the name of this worm in the Robertson area if possible. many thanks

Georgia Roberts 08 Feb 2010 14:27 Hello. We have had a lot of rain recently (Robertson, NSW) and yesterday I found two huge worms in one of our paddocks. I have taken images. One was dead, and only 25-30cm in length, but the other was still alive and around 45-55cm. Is it known what sort of worms these might have been? I can send images. Best wishes, Georgia Roberts

Hi Aine, thank you for your enquiry. Unfortunately Museum Victoria no longer has a worm expert on staff. As you are from NSW you want to contact the Australian Museum in Sydney who may be able to assist you. Good Luck, the gurgling noise that some of the large worms make in their burrows can be quite impressive.

Hi, Do you know if there is anywhere visitors can view these worms? I believe there was a GGEW museum in Bass, but it may well be closed these days. I will be touring Victoria in the new year and would love to observe them. many thanks, Megan James Sydney

Hi Megan - the Museum you describe is now called Wildlife Wonderland and can be contacted at (03) 5678-2222. It did contain a giant earthworm (through which visitors could crawl), as well as other giant earthworm exhibits, but current information concentrates on other exhibits. A phone call before your visit would be our suggestion, to obtain up to date information on the display.

Please refer to the answer we gave Steve on the 24th September 2010. Even though the answer is two years old, it is still relevant as we still don’t have anyone that has studied how and when the Megascolides australis evolved.

Hi Peter, Giant Gippsland Earthworms basically eat their way through the soil and probably ingest things incidentally through this process. The worms ingest organic matter, protozoa, bacteria and fungi etc. as the soil moves through their body. They don't have teeth but they do have a gizzard which would grind the food. The important material is absorbed through the blood stream as it passes through the intestine and the rest comes out as 'cast' material or waste. The Giant Gippsland Earthworms leave this cast within their burrows, unlike many other introduced worms that cast above ground.

Hi William, according to the National Recovery Plan for the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, Megascolides australis. There are no data on which to base population estimates or trends. This is mainly the result of the difficulties inherent in studying a subterranean species. This report does provide some interesting information on what we do know of the species and the threats it is facing.

So, I'm doing a biology project for a class, and the Australian Giant Gippsland Earthworm is one of the species I've chosen to study.
I've looked upon numerous websites and still am not sure on how old they are when they reproduce, or how many offspring they have. Is there anyway you could help me out?

There was an article on this species of worm in the old ANH (Sydney)magazine (now defunct). I wrote a letter informing them of the giant earthworm in SE Quensland. I have personally seen this worm (Megalogaster)in the Gold Coast hinterland when helping a friend dig an irrigation channel. It is at least as big as your Victorian species! I suppose they both could be relics of the ancient Gondwannan megafauna. Did anyone see the ABC Landline item today on big worms of the world and their hunters?

I lived in Gippsland for many years. I recall seeing a photograph ( 1890/1900s vintage) where a number of people, standing shoulder to shoulder carried a Gippsland worm.
I further recollect that the length was ten feet and half an inch -( 3060 millimetres) I imagined them straining for that 1/2" - you would be tempted wouldn't you?:)
I also recall that the text stated that specimen was the " original" which was sent to I think Museum Victoria, and was the one which was examined and led to the species being scientifically recognised. Isn't there a term for such a specimen?

Hi Gordon, some of the older shots of the Giant Gippsland Earthworm are likely to have contained a number of worms. People held the two ends of the worms in their hands so it looked like one enormous worm. You are correct that there are names for the specimens used to describe species; holotype is the term given to the specimen that a scientific description is based on. The Australian Museum provides a good description of all the different types of types. There is no holotype for the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, the Australian Museum in Sydney hold the syntypes for this species.

I happened across a kookaburra tugging at what I thought was a tree root or piece of rope today at Emerald Lake in the Dandenong Ranges. After 5 minutes or so, I went to investigate and found the damaged end of a big worm. I was able to easily pull it out of its clay soil burrow. To my amazement it was about a metre long. Photo available if you would like to see. It has to be the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, doesn't it?

Hi Lynn, there are a number of large species of earthworm known to occur in Victoria in places such as the Dandenongs and East Gippsland. Despite their large size the worms in the Dandenongs are not thought to be the same species as the Giant Gippsland Earthworm.

Lynn
27 March, 2015 20:57

Thank you for your response. I am very curious to learn more about these big worms now. Can you please tell me where I might find more information (in particular local information)? Does your museum have any related exhibits? Do you know if Parks Victoria would possibly keep records of sightings?

Hi Lynn, I spoke to a worm expert outside of the museum and she said to her knowledge no-one is working on these worms in the Dandenongs at present. She said the species there is probably Notoscolex hulmei but thats just a best guess without seeing an actual specimen. If we become aware of anyone taking on research into the worms there we will post the information on this website as records could be of use to them.

Rebecca
6 July, 2015 14:18

Hello, I'm very curious with something about your giant earthworm (Australia seems to get have all the most interesting and terrifying creatures. I guess that balances it out) as you've probably seen there was a recent video from the BBC about the giant red leech (eek!) eating a giant blue worm, "sucking it down like spaghetti" was how they put it. Yet, right before it reached the top of the worm I noticed the worm had a face with two distinct eyes and a mouth that vomited red blood before being completely ingested. My question is: since when do earthworms have a face and red blood? (Especially since its seems to be almost entirely subterranean) I thought annelids had blue or green blood (maybe that's arthropods or mollusks...). Anyway, I've been trying to find a description of your worm's... face or a close-up picture with no luck and for some reason it's just been bugging me (teehee, entomologist humor!) Thanks for your attention and I take my hat off to anyone who can survive your crazy continent!

Hi Rebecca, I've just seen the footage and I think the face might be two fortuitously placed specks of mud. The Giant Gippsland Earthworm in Victoria certainly has no face; the species spends all its time underground and so has no need of eyes. If the Giant Gippsland Earthworm is cut it bleeds a very red blood.